Many of us never thought we'd see the day when a third-party web browser would hit the App Store, especially considering Apple's previous app rejections due to "duplicating functionality" already on the phone. However, Apple finally approved the app today, and it already seems to be hitting UK App Stores and should be in the US store in a matter of hours.

The Opera Mini browser for iPhone has been anticipated for quite a while now, and for good reason: in terms of speed, Opera is the clear-cut winner. When you request a site with Opera on your phone, Opera's very own servers get the request to go to the site, download it, compress it, then send it to your iPhone, both lessening the bandwidth used as well as making the loading of the site much (up to 5x!) quicker. However, the browser does not ship with some well-known Apple-established flourishes, like pinch-to-zoom, and it also appears that Opera hand-coded their very own UI view, as there is no rubberbanding, and the scroll bar on the side acts a little differently. Also, you may notice iPhone-formatted (mobile) sites rendering slightly differently than they should, but considering it is only day 1, some of these things are bound to be worked out.

Maybe someday we'll see a MobileSubstrate extension to set Opera as the default web browser!